New York Times Does Hatchet Job On Amazon

Over the weekend the New York Times published a hatchet job about the company culture at Amazon.com. You can tell it's a hatchet job--meaning an article intended to unfairly and one-sidedly attack some one or thing--because the article goes on at length about the terrible employee morale at Amazon. For example, the article says:

The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses.

Now there's a revelation. The company encourages employees to fink on their fellows to get in tight with management. The problem here is that every company in the world has employees who rat on their fellows. Nothing new or different here.

A more serious charge is the following:

Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.

But this is the sort of thing that happens in many large corporations, including Apple and Microsoft. The fault lies not with the company, but the law. The law says employment is "at will", which means the company can fire you at any time for any reason.

The Times could have written an exposé of personnel practices in American corporations and shown how only unionization could protect the workers from these practices, since just having the CEO say he'll take care of it will not cut it. But this is not about personnel practices. This article is about how bad Amazon is, no matter how little the company differs from every other capitalist company.

The underlying reason for this hatchet job is the print media's anger, frustration, and hatred of digital media. Amazon happens to be the focal point. The anger felt by members of the print media against Amazon is real and unreasonable. I recently self-published my own book with a print-on-demand publisher who is affiliated with Amazon. I went to an independent bookstore in Washington, DC, and asked them if I could have a book-signing event at their store. They told me it was their policy not to hold book-signings for books published by Amazon.

"Wait a minute," I complained. "Your policy is not going to hurt Amazon, but it will hurt me and other authors like me who need a chance to bring their work before the public."

The management than assured me that if anyone ordered my book, they would be glad to fill that order. In other words, they were throwing a roadblock in my path to success, but if I ever, somehow managed to succeed, they would be glad to share my profit with me.

Thanks, guys. Your generosity is overwhelming.

But anger against Amazon is justifiable because people in the newspaper and bookselling industry are losing their livelihood with no possibility of recovery. The anger is not going to help, though. These jobs are going away and will never come back. These white-collar, salaried positions are not being moved to Singapore or China. They are vanishing. Automation is destroying them.

There is a hatchet job that could be done about that, but it's not one that the New York Times wants to write. It's a story about how capitalism is failing to provide jobs for the people that automation is making obsolete. This automation is making big profits for corporations like Amazon and its ilk, but it isn't doing much for newspapers like the Times, which has laid off hundreds of employees in recent years. (Question: How many of those layoffs harm the employees who were fired through no fault of their own?)

We need a serious examination of what this country is going to do right now to help people made redundant by automation. Tomorrow will be too late. Today is too late, already, frankly, as we have the spectacle of billionaires running the country for their own benefit without a single sincere concern for the people who must pay for their abundance.

What? Latinos are anti-immigration? Who Knew!

I am mystified how Donald Trump can claim, "Latinos love me." I never would have suspected that. I have a few latino friends, admittedly if they are my friends that makes them somewhat unusual. But in fact, the latinos I know are angry at Obama for not giving more consideration to immigrants who have been arrested, hassled, and deported relentlessly on his watch. These latinos are not fans of Obama. I am mystified how Donald Trump can claim, "Latinos love me."

But the Republicans? After all, the only alternative to Sanders, Clinton, or God knows who else, is Trump, Walker, or Jeb! Working class folk--and nearly all latinos are working class--see right through Trump. He is exactly the same as every boss they ever had. Smiling, jokey. But don't ask him for a raise. Yes, he's a big pal to latinos, but all the illegals need to leave the country, right away.

For a latino, the problem is this: Those illegals, they're family members. On family I know has one daughter born in this country while the other daughter and mother could face deportation under a Trump administration. Is the mother, or her American husband, going to vote for Trump and risk having a loved one exiled, perhaps for years?

The problem for Trump and the others trying to please the xenophobic Republican base is that up to half the "undocumented" immigrants are related to American citizens. The citizens are not pleased that their relatives may be deported at a moment's notice. They love those people. They would hate to say good-bye.

Furthermore, the latinos who have been American citizens, in many cases for generations, feel a kinship with those "undocumented immigrants" who have just arrived. They speak the same language, share the same customs, and even look a lot alike. Are those American citizen latinos going to stand by and watch Trump persecute their friends and neighbors? I think not.

I suspect that Trump's immigration plan will not win him a single latino vote, no matter how much he claims he likes latinos and they love him.

Nope, there's no bubble in bonds

A big headline this week is that there is a bubble in bonds. This comes from the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, the man who presided over the tech stock bubble and the housing bubble and did nothing to prevent either of them. So his expertise in this area is questionable.

Greenspan's reason for announcing a bond-market bubble is also questionable. He says the return on investment for bonds is too low for the price of the bond itself. But the return rate on bonds is set by the government, which could raise the rate at any moment to whatever it likes, but refuses to do so because they are afraid of starting a recession. Likewise, investors in bonds are not concerned about the return on their investment. No, they are looking for a place to put their money where it will not decline in value.

China has just devalued its currency by 12% in 2 days. But all of its US bonds, held in dollars, have remained almost steady in value. So why is China investing in bonds? Because it's a good investment for them and they don't care what the return on investment is.

Hillary Clinton is "Most qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced"

Sounds like 3 different views of the same thing: Qualified because of training at elite schools, knowledgeable because of education at elite institutions, experienced by doing the elite jobs her qualifications and education got her.

What she really has is the illusion that corporations are good for America when they are doing them harm. She has a flawed education because she doesn't trust science when it says that fossil fuel burning is destroying the planet. She has the self-delusion that because she has had these elite advantages she is actually capable of providing leadership. She's proven before that she does not.

Neocons beat the drums for War with Iran with fraudulent study

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News all agree that Iran has increased its cyberattacks in the past 6 months. They all get their information from one source, however, and that source is unreliable. The source is a report--

written by Frederick Kagan and published by American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Kagan was one of the group of neocons who convinced George Bush to attack Iraq in 2001. Kagan also recommended the famous "surge" strategy that led to more victories in Iraq but no substantial progress. No territory was seized and held. No armies surrendered.

Now there is a group of militarists, including Kagan, who are trying to push the US into a war with Iran. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a long-time right-wing front group, has warned in its report,

Whatever the final outcome of the nuclear negotiations, we must expect that the threat of a cyberattack from Iran will continue to grow. We may have just enough time to get ready to meet that threat.

Kagan is on record as supporting putting American troops in Iraq to fight ISIS:

There is, in fact, no end in sight for this war now, especially if we allow Iraq to go down. A policy of retreat and abandonment remains as it has always been the fastest road to endless war.

The Israelis have declared it would be a short war, just a few bombs to shut down Iran's nuclear research facilities. If that is true, why doesn't Israel bomb the  facilities?

Maybe because it's not true. Maybe that unprovoked attack would lead to war between Israel and Iran, a war which Israel could not win and does not dare to undertake. Israel's military actions of late have come in limited engagements against Hamas, the governing party in Gaza. The Israeli army has more manpower, is better armed, and vastly superior in technical ability. Hamas has a few rocket launchers. Defeating Hamas in a brief sortie does not compare to the force necessary to win a war against Iraq.

Israel therefore needs to convince the US to take up the fight. Right now, the US and Iran and four other nations are negotiating an agreement to limit Iranian nuclear power, an agreement that would defuse the tensions in the Middle East considerably.

Supporters of this war against Iran--the neocons, Israel, and elements inside the US government intelligence community--would love to find another pretext to attack Iran. So they have ginned up the idea that Iran will replace its nuclear ability with a cyberwar capability. Kogan, the neocon, writes in his report that whatever happens, whether there is a disarmament treaty or no, Iran will continue developing its cyberwar capabilities.

So much is clear from the report. What the report bases this conclusion on is hardly believable. The cybersecurity company, Norse Corporation, says Iran step up its cyberattacks 115% between January 2015 and March 2015. As evidence for this hypothesis, Norse offers the fact that more attacks were made from Iranian IP addresses against its network of sensors.

Just to be clear on this, the Norse company claims the Iranians have conducted hundreds of cyberattacks against targets in the US. If that is true, what damage was done? What banks had their data compromised? What computer code was implanted in what sensitive networks?

The answer to these questions is, none. All the attacks, even if real, came against computers that Norse set up to look like banks, businesses, and research facilities, but none of them were actually banks, businesses, or research facilities. But computer experts dispute whether those attacks against fake targets were actually real.

All the newspaper reports, many of them from right-wing propaganda outlets like NewsMax and Breitbart News, simply repeat the dubious findings verbatim. NPR broadcast a brief segment that gave an entirely different picture of what might be happening, one that was not flattering to Norse Corporation.

Stuart CEO of Cylance, another cybersecurity company, says he has seen a drop in Iranian cyberattack activity over the past several months and he knows others that have seen the same thing. Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global is even more critical of the study. He says anyone can compromise computers anywhere in the world, conduct cyberattacks from those computers, and make it seem like the attacks are coming from any country in the world, in this case, Iran.

Carr continues by saying he believes there is a right-wing political motivation here because AEI is involved. He says the right-wing wants to paint Iran as a threat.

The right-wing chicken hawks got us to go to war based on a lie back in 2002. They're trying the same thing again. Let's hope they fail, this time.

Wages vs. productivity since 1973

 I question any argument against a higher minimum wage. The plain truth is that higher wages benefit workers, lower wages benefit employers. We're way off the scale right now, since we haven't kept pace with the minimum wage since the 1970s. The minimum wage in 1968 was $1.60, the equivalent of $10.34 in 2012 dollars.

http://www.dol.gov/minwage/chart1.htm (minimum wage history)

The big picture is worse than that, however, because while productivity has increased drastically since the 1960s, wages have not. Productivity has increased 74% since 1973; hourly wages have increased only 9% during that time. Productivity has increased 8 times as fast as hourly wages. If the workers of this country kept the increase in the value of their labor, wages would be 74% higher than they were in 1973. Since the minimum wage was $10 per hour in 1973 (calculating using 2015 dollars), the minimum wage should now be $17.40 per hour.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-the-gap-between-worker-pay-and-productivity-is-so-problematic/385931/ (productivity vs. wage statistics)

Why is that? Since the 1960s, productivity has skyrocketed due to the introduction of labor-saving devices: computers, calculators, spreadsheets, internet, mobile phones, databases, just to name a few. The increased productivity should have gone to the workers. Instead, the employers kept all the increases in productivity for themselves.

You could argue that equality of outcomes (equal wealth) is a socialistic idea. But the Capitalists used their economic and political leverage to squeeze every bit of profit from technological advances made over the last 40 years. That is truly class warfare.

White Terrorist Shoots Up Dallas

At about 4 am on Saturday morning, a huge, blue van stops in front of the Dallas police station and a white male, now identified as James Boulwer, gets out and starts firing a gun at the building, the cops, anything that moves. It's an armored van but the driver bought it on ebay.

Why is this an act of terrorism, and, just as important, why are the police saying it isn't one? and where did a guy who had a history of mental illness and violent behavior get an armored truck and a 

This is an act of terrorism, because 

(1) it is intended to frighten people in addition to showing what a stud the guy in the truck is. 

(2) because the guy was acting for a political reason, attacking the police, defenders of the state, and (3) because the guy showed no concern for innocent bystanders (If it was a military attack, he should have cared about that sort of thing.)

(4) in addition, besides opening fire with an assault weapon in the middle of a crowded city, he left a sack full of pipe bombs unattended where anyone could have stumbled against it (it's the middle of the night, remember). Police noticed the sack and used a bomb-seeking robot to investigate it. The bomb was rigged to explode on touch and it did. That is a terrorist act, because the guy did not care who he killed.

The reason for the attack was that the man held the police responsible for his losing custody of his child while his wife was in jail. Of course, the police were not responsible. The laws of the state of Texas were responsible. Boulware assaulted his mother and his uncle in 2013 during an unprovoked attack.

We know where Boulware got the van. He found it in Georgia, from an eBay ad, at a company that armor-plates vehicles but apparently doesn't care who buys them. I'm not saying there was anything illegal about the sale, I'm just saying that anyone can buy an armor-plated vehicle in this country. This is just as much a deadly weapon as an assault rifle, even worse, because it can be used to stand off a whole police department, as it was in this case. This kind of truck is used by police departments to transport suspects.

We don't know for certain where the guns came from, but in 2013, when the police picked up bulware on an assault charge, he had told friends he was going to get some weapons. He never got there, so it's possible that those weapons are the same as the ones used in this attack.

Why did Boulware start shooting at police?

In a televised video on CNN, Boulware's father said his son had reached his "breaking point" and gave his opinion that we all have a breaking point. I submit that, while we all may have a breaking point, we usually call a suicide hotline (or something similar) before we go out and start shooting at police. Boulware's father lamented, "Where does a white man go for help?" If he is mentally ill and prone to violence, he reaches for his guns and goes out to kill someone.